walk first, then dance

Self-employment. This seems to be the theme of the year on mollyblog, so far. Self-employment and the power to sustain not only one's self, but also one's spirits.

I've been learning quite a bit about my own ability to be patient with myself. My instinct normally would be to become terribly impatient with myself at any given turn. I feel like I've spent my whole life simply getting to this point where I know what I want to be and who I want to become, and surely that's too long to spend on that. Up until recently, I would sometimes worry that mid-30's is too late a start for anyone to ever accomplish all there is to accomplish in a short life. I should have decided to follow my heart back in my teens in order to have a running start at film making so that by now I might have been On My Way. Sometimes I fear that only figuring it out now will in the end give me the opportunity to be nothing more than an amateur. But like The Great Calvero said, "That's all any of us are: amateurs. We don't live long enough to be anything else."

It was only last week, really, that I granted myself time. Why shouldn't it take years to begin? There are plenty of professions who spend a lot of time training in school. Masters study for their whole lives. As I wasn't one of those children who decided upon my calling early in life, I didn't pack off to film school but resorted, rather, to a cirriculum of general arts and theatre. A more focused study in film might have moved me forward more quickly but it would have come without all the other art and theatre I got to do. I realise that my life is a lifelong study of simply finding the process of practicing the art of creation. I mustn't rush the beginning of the doing bit once I have the process in place and be off to a bad start. I already had that experience with my first short film and everything since then has been an exercise in identifying how I wish to enter the world and make my mark by my own terms, as I wish it to play out.

And so, though there are days when I feel like the dregs in the bottom of the barrel I am becoming aware that progress is being made, even if it's something you can't track on paper. I am evolving. It's a nice feeling to forgive one's self for not being a recognised genius from a young age. I wonder where I got the impression that I ever had to be that. No one ever asked me to be a genius at any stage of my life.

I'm in the particularly lucky position of sharing some moments of grievous self-doubt with a very few close creative peers. Today I watched my friend, a fellow film maker, cry as she battled a flood of doubt about her worth. All the difficulty that comes with having the strength of character to decide to serve one's own purpose in life and go the road less travelled came pouring out of her, along with frustrations about people not taking her new path seriously. She has withdrawn from her former life, at least for now, to dedicate herself to her work and her self, and to define who she is without the confines of her social circle. I could feel her pain because I know just how hard she's been working to define herself and her profession on the outside, and that the changes she's made aren't always taken seriously.

She is a brave one. She made a radical change in pursuit of her dream of her life. My changes have come so slowly that people haven't really noticed the passing of the old molly. Her changes have been meteoric. I love her for her honesty and insight, and her beauty. I tried to fill her with love before I parted with her, and fill her with the belief that her journey is right, brave, and amazing.

The world of unstructured, undefined possibility can feel like a vast empty wilderness, and can be filled with such loneliness. I'm watching all around me members of my family and my closest friends all simultaneously (as if it's a mass movement) begin to search for truth in their lives and their work and I realise that in this wilderness I am clearly not alone.